


the line i called the horizon

by consumptive_sphinx



Series: that i should rise and you should not [2]
Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Ambiguous Relationships, Catholicism, Epilepsy, Feelings and opinions about destiny, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25184953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consumptive_sphinx/pseuds/consumptive_sphinx
Summary: “You and Mordred seem close,” Lancelot comments to him, not disapprovingly.Galahad weighs speech against silence for a moment and then says “He thinks we’re soulmates,” not looking at Lancelot’s face.“And what do you think?” his father asks him, careful, careful.“I don’t know what I think,” Galahad says, and means it.--One of those soulmate AUs where you have two names: your soulmate, and your mortal enemy.
Relationships: Galahad/Mordred (Arthurian)
Series: that i should rise and you should not [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890229
Comments: 3
Kudos: 53





	the line i called the horizon

Galahad is lucky, far luckier than many; he knows from when he’s a child which of his names is to be his soulmate.

His very existence is a promise, and the words on his back, each letter as large as his palm, are an echo of that promise: he is for God, he is to be for God. Galahad will never have to wait to meet his soulmate; his soulmate is already here, in everything he sees and says and does. As a child he half-lives in the chapel, reads scripture until the raised ink under his fingertips is as familiar to him as his own breath.

It might have been lonely, in another world, but lights and angels shine in his vision and saints’ voices echo in his ears. He is promised, he is a promise; he is wanted, he is more loved than he can even begin to imagine.

  
  


It isn’t until he comes to Camelot, until after the Siege Perilous (another promise, not that he’d needed to hear it; the corners of his vision shine gold with angels’ light and Saint James the Greater spoke to him last night and the name of God is inscribed on his back in letters large enough to read from twenty paces away and he is loved, loved, loved) that Galahad meets the bearer of the other name on his skin.

Mordred is sharp-faced and sharp-voiced and sharp-tongued, and he has  _ Camelot _ written like a slash across his throat. He never seems to be still, his hands and body constantly in motion, and his smiles show all his teeth, and he tosses out careless sarcasm with a speed that rivals Sir Kay. They say he’s the son of a witch, that he cannot be drowned, that he is fey and wild and strange.

Galahad expects to dislike him. He doesn’t. Mordred holds himself apart, stays at the edges of crowds, in a way that some might call pride but that Galahad recognizes as nervousness; he doesn’t try to look Galahad in the eye. And Galahad is promised to God, is a promise from God, has a destiny to fulfill, is a destiny to fulfill — but he’s never wanted an enemy.

Still, though, it is unsettling how Mordred (his fated enemy, for all he doesn’t want one and never has) seeks him out, makes time for Galahad as he makes time for few others.

“They say you’re the King’s bastard,” Galahad tells him when they pass out of earshot of the other knights, in the hope that perhaps Mordred will stop trailing him.

“They say a great number of things,” Mordred says, smiles a sharp half-smile. “They say that the wizard Merlin is half a demon. They say your soulmate is Christ himself and you hear the voice of the Archangel Michael in your ears.”

“If you were trying to confirm it for me you couldn’t have done better than that,” Galahad says, and there’s a silence and then Mordred laughs, sudden and over nearly as soon as it starts.

“Alright then,” he says and he’s smiling again, softer this time, and Galahad doesn’t understand what he did right but Mordred has a lovely smile when it’s sincere. “— can I see?”

This seems like a strange thing to ask of a man you’ve barely met but perhaps that’s how they do things in Camelot (or perhaps Galahad isn’t the only one who is reaching out in the dark to try and feel where the edges of the rules are.) “Yes,” he says on impulse, lets Mordred lead them somewhere private and removes his tunic and shirt to show him the name written in black between his shoulderblades.

Mordred reaches out, and doesn’t quite touch him but Galahad can feel the heat of his hands anyway. “If you had wings they’d frame it,” he says, sounding like he’s saying it more to himself than to Galahad. “What’s your other name?”

“What’s yours?” and it’s less a response than a challenge.

“You.”

_ Oh. Of course. _ They usually are reciprocal, after all, as little as anything about Galahad’s soulmarks has ever been usual.

“So they do match,” Mordred says, and his hand lands on Galahad’s back. His touch is very, very warm. “I  _ knew _ there was a reason I liked you.”

And that’s possibly the strangest thing Galahad has heard since he arrived. “...what do you think we are, to one another?”

“I figure that’s up to us,” Mordred says, and Galahad turns to look at him to see if he’s at all serious and he’s smiling again, halfway between the sharp smile and the soft one, and Galahad has no idea at all what to do with that or with him.

  
  


Galahad’s father has  _ Guinevere _ written in a flowing script around his wrist. He doesn’t try to hide it, as most men would if they had the Queen’s name for a soulmark; neither does he display it with pride or make it into a badge. He simply lets it be and lets people comment or not, as they choose.

“You and Mordred seem close,” Lancelot comments to him, not disapprovingly.

Galahad weighs speech against silence for a moment and then says “He thinks we’re soulmates,” not looking at Lancelot’s face.

“And what do you think?” his father asks him, careful, careful.

The rumor mill in Camelot is never quiet and never seems to sleep and Galahad makes a point of not trusting a word that comes out of it (they’ve decided that Galahad’s fated enemy is to be Satan, which Galahad isn’t certain how he feels about but Mordred thinks is hilarious) but he’s seen Lancelot with his shirt off in the training yard, knows that his other name is  _ Gawain _ scrawled across his ribcage. 

He’s seen the two men laughing together, knows them to be good friends. He’s seen them sparring together, has seen them fighting side by side, has seen for himself the trust between them.

“I don’t know what I think,” Galahad says, and means it.

  
  


Mordred comes to him at night trembling and begs to have the noise beaten out of his head, begs to have the worst parts driven out of him so he can live with the rest. Galahad does, and holds him afterwards and says “Next time come to me before you’re shaking with it,” and doesn’t say  _ I love you, _ doesn’t say  _ maybe this is the difference between us, that I have never had to beg to be touched, that I have always known how loved I was. _ Doesn’t say  _ Mordred, you can have that love, He would love you too. _ Just holds Mordred, cradles him against his chest, lets Mordred cling.

“I’ll be at your door every night if you aren’t careful,” Mordred says, and curls into him, and Galahad holds him tighter and says “Would that be so bad?” and doesn’t say  _ you are wanted already. You are. You don’t have to hurt for it. _

  
  


Nearly every night Galahad dreams of what dying might feel like when it comes. 

They aren’t bad dreams; he doesn’t wake up from them shaking and desperate for air, not like Mordred does. They don’t hurt. He dreams about his body becoming something unrecognizable, about dissolving into light and seafoam; he dreams about water and song filling up his lungs.

“You realize that’s concerning, don’t you,” Mordred says when Galahad tells him, and Galahad doesn’t know how to say that it isn’t, that it shouldn’t be. That he is so, so loved and nearly every night he dreams of leaving the tangible world behind for that love.

_ “My God, how I burned, how I burned with longing to leave earthly things and fly back to You,” _ he says instead of any of that, because he doesn’t have his own words, doesn’t know how to find them.

“You’re quoting someone.”

“Saint Augustine,” he agrees. “But it’s still true.”

Mordred just — looks at him. “You’re really not afraid of it at all?”

_ Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know. Not the things I dream about. Only that it will hurt, when it comes.  _ “I’m not.”  _ I love the world but there are things I love more, Mordred, don’t you see that? _

“No, of course not,” Mordred says, and smiles, mouth open. His teeth flash white. “You have a  _ destiny.” _

“I  _ am _ a destiny,” Galahad corrects without thinking about it.  _ I’m a promise, I am promised, this is what I am made of as much as it is what I am made for, Mordred, please understand. _

“You’re a _ person,” _ and Mordred’s voice is heated now. “They don’t get to treat you like you aren’t.”

“Not the way they are,” Galahad says, because he isn’t, because it isn’t about how anyone treats him. He walks in a different world, sees through different eyes, and at night he dreams of being untethered from a human body and allowed to be pure mist. “I don’t think I’d want to be.”  _ I am a promise I am made out of promises, I know what and who I’m for, _ and he doesn’t know what it would be like not to have that purpose but he doesn’t want it.

Saint Agnes of Rome spoke to him this morning and his entire body aches and he wants so badly to leave it behind and he doesn’t expect anyone to understand, not really, and Mordred who dreams of drowning and wakes up desperate for air least of all. But still there is the wanting.

  
  


“It won’t save Camelot,” Mordred tells him, and there is no need to elaborate, no need for an antecedent.

_ It isn’t for Camelot. She may be your soulmate but she isn’t mine, _ he doesn’t say, not because he wouldn’t know how but because it isn’t fair and it isn’t true; it is for Camelot, Arthur pronounced him a promise to the world and he wants so badly for his King to have been right, the world is good and Camelot is good and he loves it nearly as much as he wants to leave it behind for God’s embrace. “You can’t know that,” he says instead.

“Do you even  _ want _ the Grail?” He realizes abruptly that Mordred is crying, and Galahad doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t know what to do.

“It’s what I’m alive for,” he says, “I am for God, you know I am for God,” because he doesn’t know how to say  _ I am so loved, and He would love you too, He would, Mordred, the only thing keeping you from forgiveness is yourself _ without just hurting him, and Mordred sobs “That’s not an  _ answer,”  _ and all Galahad can say is “I know.”

“This quest is going to kill you,” Mordred says with perfect surety, and wipes at his eyes with his hand, although he hasn’t stopped crying and isn’t like to.

“I know that too,” says Galahad, and his eyes are blurred, for once not with light, but with tears.

**Author's Note:**

> I tell you it has taken me all my life  
> to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,  
> to soften and blur and finally banish  
> the edges you regret I don’t see,  
> to learn that **the line I called the horizon**  
>  does not exist and sky and water,  
> so long apart, are the same state of being.
> 
> — _Monet Refuses the Operation,_ by Lisel Mueller

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [{podfic} the line I called the horizon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25277662) by [WolffyLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolffyLuna/pseuds/WolffyLuna)




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